I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.
I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.
When I was young and stupid I was more conservative, and I was pro gun. Then I became very anti gun. Now, as the world gets shittier and more dangerous, I am drifting more towards pro gun.
It’s a funny thing. It’s made me realize that being a pacifist or being anti gun is, in a way, almost a privileged position to take. It’s easy to say “I’m anti violence” when your existence isn’t being threatened, it’s a lot harder to stomach as the threats get more real.
When you have the gun, you’re the one bringing a gun to the party.
For clarity, when you say “anti-gun”, what is that position? Like, “average people should not have them, period”?
Not trying to knock on you - it’s that there’s so many positions which get lumped under “pro-” or “anti-”, it helps to actually understand where someone is coming from.
“Average people should not have them and I don’t want one either.”
My opinions on that have shifted.
Same. ICE invaded my neighborhood and I promptly got my permit to carry and now I bought my first gun and am practicing at the range and carrying regularly
Not OP, but my position has always been the constitutional position of “a well regulated militia”. Like imo you shouldn’t be able to have guns in your home, but it would be fine if there was a single gun locker on literally every block where you could store an entire personally-owned arsenal, as long as the locker met strict security rules and the gun users met strict and recurring training requirements.
I took a really similar arc as you did, and now carry on a regular basis. I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head: it’s easy to be anti gun when there isn’t an imminent threat.
Pacifism is sometimes privilege and sometimes moral ideology taken to its noblest extreme. You have some who are safe no matter what and decry violence, but you also have folks like the victims of the Gnadenhutten massacre, who didn’t fight back because they were pacifists. You also have nonviolent people who do so strategically.
Your existence was being threatened but now that you have a gun you’re safe? Sounds like creative writing to me. What was the threat? How did you counter that threat with a gun? Was their a big confrontation? Did you have to put a motherfucker down?
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Damn, a lot of people wouldn’t have learned a reasonable lesson from that interaction …
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